Let's Not Forget...It is Pride Month

There won't be any parades or festivals this year, but I still need to have a little Pride this month.

So I offer some of my all time favorite music selections for your listening pleasure - if you are as old as I am these will "bring you back" to a time that, for me at least, was as exciting and joyous as I have ever experienced. (See the excerpt from my memoir below.)

























Here's an excerpt from "Did You Ever See A Horse Go By? - A Coming Out Memoir:

“Well, I’ll tell you about the first time I went to Backstreet Café down on that industrial road in the Westville section. The road was rarely used in the daytime and even less so after dark, unless you were going to the club. I hadn’t been out long and I’d only been to the Chez Est a few times—which is mostly an S&M bar, you know, which is what the guys do a lot of there.”

“I just love those Stand and Model types,” Bobby J. said, in case someone didn’t get the S&M reference.

“But Backstreet was different,” I continued. “It was the first big disco club I’d ever seen. And the location was like a secret that only we gays knew about. I remember seeing this big, plain, one story brick industrial building without any signs or bright lights. Nothing on the outside to let you know it’s a popular gay nightclub and disco on the inside.” 
...

“I was with Joel, you know, Joel Comeau, my first and only ex. After paying our five bucks and getting our hands stamped, we walked past the bouncer into the main bar and I felt like Alex in Wonderland. It was like walking through some enchanted portal into a world invisible to most earthlings... It was like Dorothy going from a black and white world to Oz, which was suddenly in Technicolor and stereophonic sound.”

Carl said, “I’ll tell you, Backstreet was nothing next to the big clubs back in the seventies, especially down in the City, and I’m not even talking about Studio 54. Sorry, Fran, go on with your story.”
...

“Well, I had nothing to compare it to,” I said. “There had to be hundreds of pulsating bodies on the dance floor and plenty of guys without shirts... The DJ was playing It’s Raining Men by The Weather Girls, which was already a classic. I think the whole building was vibrating. You could feel the thumping base of the disco music and the energy of the crowd on the dance floor. And everyone was just letting it all hang out, as we used to say, and everyone was echoing Martha Wash, ‘It’s Raining Men! Hallelujah!’”
... 

“Dancing among that crowd was such a thrill, such an exciting feeling. And knowing that we were all frickin’ gay and that there were thousands more like us in gay clubs everywhere, it was like being let out of solitary confinement. Like, for the first time in my life I could say ‘fuck you’ to all the straights in the world, whether they deserved it or not. Like there was solidarity in our numbers and we were really fucking special!”

“Yeah, Fran,” Carl kidded. “They gave that coming out party just for you.”

Bobby J. thought that Carl’s comment was a hoot and gave out an audible “hoot” for emphasis. I gave it back. “Fuck you, too, guys. It was just so great. And the feeling of being free to just let go! It was amazing. I took to being out on the dance floor like it was second nature. Shit, who needs booze or drugs, I can get high just dancing my buns off to High Energy and You Spin Me Round. Yeah, remember that one, ‘like a record baby,’ you know?”

“Yeah, Fran, like a record, you’re still spinning ’round,” Lee said with a knowing smile. We all laughed. But I couldn’t resist adding, “Well, we should be thankful we have places like Backstreet and the Chez Est. There are, no doubt, poor, disadvantaged homosexuals in rural areas of North Dakota who have never seen the inside of a gay disco.”

“Deprived homos,” Bobby J. said, “or should I say, depraved homos?” We all laughed again, even though it wasn’t that funny. Bobby J. hooted again.